Bio

Having left school with good GCSEs and A Levels, and after a gap year spent teaching in Germany, I went to Hull University to study Computer Science in the Autumn of 2001. My studies there included modules on Java programming, business technologies, 3D Design and a wide variety of other science fields.

During my time there I continued a teenage website design hobby with my first major website, "RepRev", based on an upcoming computer game, Republic: The Revolution by Elixir Studios. This site was designed visually by a friend but coded and maintained by myself and provided an excellent introduction not only to the language of HTML, but also to the importance of providing a continually updated resource for visitors, as well as hone the professionalism required to administer the challenges of a busy forum.

A second website, "Evil Planet", followed to focus on Elixir Studios' second game, Evil Genius. The design of the site featured a quirky visual design by another friend, but again was coded and maintained solely by myself. The site proved to be a extremely popular resource for fans, with over 3,000,000 unique visits since its conception in February 2004 and around 250,000 forum posts by a community active to this day.

May 2004 saw the completion of my studies with a high-end 2:1 result. Due to the strong working relationship I had built up with Elixir through my websites, they responded positively to my request for work and a week after my final exam, I moved to London to start my first job, testing the aforementioned "Evil Genius". This was an excellent first "taster" of the games industry, and the time testing was documented on my forums (and can be read here).

I was promoted to the position of a code scripter (which included a small design role) for a future game at the studios, which I continued with until May 2005. This month saw the sad closure of the company due to publishers pulling out on a deal, and I was made redundant.

Shortly after I restarted my career at a company near to my childhood home in Cheshire, called Traveller's Tales. This company has worked on several family-centered computer games and I have performed QA work on seven titles already released including "Lego Star Wars II" and "Transformers" for all platforms. Moving into 2007-2008 I continue to test new and exciting projects for the studio, and hope to have the opportunity in the near future to once again move into a scripting or design role.

Personally, I have continued to design websites. Between jobs in 2005, I set up "Bad Adverts", a humorous and tongue-in-cheek site reviewing and discussing the worst of British television adverts. This site was created primarily to experiment with my growing interest in PHP and MySQL. In December 2005 I coded and implemented "SandwichGuide.co.uk" for a client, much of which was coded using languages and tools learnt in the past half year. In 2007, I look to continue learning and implementing new and exciting web technologies and languages, in an effort to continually improve the quality of the work I can provide to a small but growing number of clients.

Aside from my career, I enjoy ten-pin bowing, the cinema and socialising with friends alongside my website design hobby. I am a member of the British Computer Society, and also of Mensa. I play the piano and enjoy casually playing many games, especially those in the FPS genre.